The Kansas Jayhawks entered the postseason with their wings clipped. Having misplaced two stars midseason — one to an N.C.A.A. suspension, one to unspecified “private issues” — they might neatly maintain double-digit losses for best the second one time in 19 seasons.

But in step with the Score Share Index statistic, which in most cases saturates bracketological prognostications forward of the N.C.A.A. match’s Variety Sunday disclose, Kansas was once, as of Friday morning, the top-ranked males’s basketball group within the nation — upper than Kentucky, which beat Kansas handily in January; upper than Virginia, which had 0 losses to groups no longer named Duke; upper even than Duke and its basketball messiah, Zion Williamson.

So will have to you get started penciling Kansas in as some of the 4 No. 1 seeds prior to the bracket is launched on Sunday evening?

Now not so speedy. Whilst you’ll be able to nonetheless to find internet sites that calculate R.P.I., the statistic is formally not more within the males’s recreation. The N.C.A.A., which created it just about 4 many years in the past, disowned it within the statistic’s maximum distinguished game final 12 months.

“We as a committee have determined the R.P.I. is more or less the day before today’s information,” this season’s variety committee chairman, Bernard Muir, the athletic director at Stanford, stated final month.

As Kansas presentations, we aren’t in R.P.I.-land anymore. And it’s tough to seek out shut observers of school basketball who don’t suppose it is a nice factor.

“By means of and massive, eyeballing it, it’s been higher than the R.P.I. at measuring nice as opposed to unhealthy groups,” the ESPN match analyst Joe Lunardi stated of the NET.

Extra delicate however no less than as vital, shifting from R.P.I. to NET — even the acronym turns out an development! — could have heralded a shift within the variety committee’s philosophical underpinnings. (The choice committee for the Department I girls’s match will nonetheless use the R.P.I.)

R.P.I., which necessarily measured best won-lost document and power of agenda, was once a device for “maximum deserving.” NET, which mixes the ones R.P.I.-like inputs with potency rankings and margins of victory, is an issue for “very best.”

“It’s much better than the R.P.I., much more reflective of the way nice the groups are,” Sokol stated.

Stanford’s Muir, who has served for a number of years at the variety committee that selections after which seeds the general N.C.A.A. males’s box of 68 groups, this week referred to as NET “recent.”

“We’re moderately proud of how the brand new metric is operating,” he stated final month, including: “There’s one thousand possessions that happen over the process a 12 months. Coming down to at least one ownership isn’t going to regulate your NET that considerably.”

Against this, the R.P.I. in point of fact may well be suffering from a unmarried ownership. It was once a good-faith try to do two issues: situate groups’ information within the context in their power of agenda, and discourage groups from working up the rating. However this intended unmarried unhealthy (if shut) loss or nice (if shut) victory may disproportionately sway a group’s ranking.

“Relying upon the amount of cash and make stronger you’ve and your enviornment, you’ll be able to principally isolate your self from the remainder of the sector or no less than regulate who you play and while you play them and the place you play them,” stated Doug Fullerton, who served at the variety committee when he was once Large Sky Convention commissioner. “It’s a have and have-not scenario.

In the meantime, discouraging blowouts intended ignoring margin of victory, which sports activities analysts for many years have most often stated is a greater predictor of long term profitable share.

“While you performed a nice group, you didn’t get an advantage for profitable via 40 than profitable via 1,” Sokol stated. He famous that Kansas has an not likely 6-1 document in one-possession and time beyond regulation video games this season, additional explaining its aberrantly prime R.P.I.

Against this, NET components recreation location into its Staff Worth Index, and the N.C.A.A. additionally varieties wins into quadrants in keeping with whether or not they got here at domestic, at the highway or at a impartial court docket. And NET accounts for margin of victory, despite the fact that in a nod to sportsmanship, the stat is capped at 10 issues.

“I feel that’s a decent strive to check out to seize what some extent unfold would inform you with out growing an incentive for somebody to run the rating up,” Fullerton stated.

To peer the sorts of groups NET favors over R.P.I., and vice versa, imagine two bubble squads: North Carolina State and Arizona State.

In spite of taking part in within the aggressive Atlantic Coast Convention, the Wolfpack had a dreadful R.P.I. of 93rd due to a agenda rated 120th-most tough, in step with Friday’s RealTimeRPI figures. This is partially the results of a convention slate that includes best 4 video games in opposition to the A.C.C.’s peak 3 groups — Duke, Virginia and North Carolina — and a nonconference agenda that started with 5 home-court gimmes. But with shut highway losses to the long run low seeds Wisconsin and Florida State in addition to wins over the most likely match groups Syracuse and Auburn, North Carolina State’s NET is an eminently first rate 33rd.

Then again, Arizona State is a vintage nice R.P.I. group, having defeated Kansas and far of a middling — however R.P.I.-boosted — Pacific-12 Convention agenda. However there may be a lot proof that the Solar Devils aren’t that nice. Within the R.P.I., they had been No. 35; in NET, No. 63. (They had been No. 61 in KenPom’s scores and No. 57 in Sokol’s L.R.M.C.)

Each groups are anticipated to assert some of the ultimate at-large spots on Sunday. But when North Carolina State will get in whilst Arizona State is ignored, it’s going to be the surest signal but that the Age of R.P.I. is over.